You write that there is a “complex materialist ecology at the root of classical Marxism.” What are the basic and most important insights of Marx and Engels regarding the destruction of nature in capitalism?

JBF: This is difficult to answer. The principal discoveries have to do with Marx’s theory of metabolic rift, his ecological-value analysis, the analysis of ecological imperialism, and Marx and Engels’s development of the dialectics of ecology. Most important from the standpoint of praxis is Marx’s extraordinarily radical definition of sustainability, in which he said no one owns the earth, rather people must maintain it for future generations as good heads of the household. Socialism, for Marx, was defined in Capital, vol. 3 in terms of the rational regulation by the associated producers of the metabolism between human beings and nature, along with the full development of human potential. Marx adopted the concept of metabolism from the natural science of his day, thereby developing an ecological systems analysis that anticipated today’s systems ecology. Marx’s metabolism argument took the form of a dialectical mediation between the labor and production process looked at from an ecological standpoint, and natural processes as a whole. Capitalism’s alienated “social metabolism” manifested itself as an “irreparable rift” in the human relation to nature through production under capitalism. Marx’s ecological value-form theory argued that value production under capitalism undermined the natural-material/use value components of wealth, generating contradictions not only in relation to labor, but also in relation to nature. Marx’s overall ecological-value analysis reveals the contradictions inherent in this, embedded in capitalism’s treatment of nature as “a free gift for capital.”

The argument by JBF that post-WW2 Western Marxism largely excluded natural science, which is where ecological thinking first developed, makes for fascinating reading.

If you abandon materialism anywhere, it will come back and bite you on the ass somewhere else. "But Marxism when it revived in the West in the 1960s was distinguished from classical Marxian thought in that it largely excluded natural science and with it nature itself from the Marxian tradition."

Western Marxism "screwed up". The rest makes for interesting reading as well.

Quote:

The USSR had the most dynamic ecological science in the world in the 1920s. This was largely but not completely destroyed in the purges under Stalin. It was partly resurrected, based initially on the natural sciences, in the post-Stalin decades, which did not prevent the Soviet Union from having a destructive relation to its environment. It is important to recognize that it was the Soviet scientists who were the first to point to accelerated climate change. There were important developments in Marxian ecology in the USSR that are only now being recognized. Logically, we do not have to support everything that was happening in Soviet society or downplay its failures in order to recognize the value of critical intellectual currents and the genuine scientific achievements.

JBF: Marx and the Earth is a book, written for a more theoretically inclined audience. Historically, Marxism has always taken the development of theory/science very seriously, without which revolutionary praxis would be impossible. In the struggles to define the critique of capitalism embodied in Marxian ecology and ecosocialism it is essential to get the theory and the science correct to the extent possible. Our practice, the clarity of our ideas, our way forward depend on that. The real importance of our work will assert itself only in practice.

Yes, a generalization but in the main pretty fair. The sterile text-booky version that survived out of the former SU never lost that insistence of a connection to natural science. Plenty of those anti-Stalinist scientists - N. Vaviliov and others - were Natural Scientists. Western Marxism definitely distanced itself from the "un-cool" Soviet version partly by distancing itself from the dull, plodding Natural Science approach and emphasizing the cool, [incipient post-modern?] Social Scientific approach. I have to admit I got sold on the marketing myself.

By the way, JBF has another book on the History of Science which underlines the essential role of what he calls materialist philosophy (used in the old Marxist sense) in the development of Science generally. It's not long but it's good. See Critique of Intelligent Design.

Some of us actually became Marxists through natural science. Not by an egregious example of capitalist exploitation that evoked our outrage, not by study and activism around internationalism and solidarity, not by going on strike. We all have our paths ... to try and reach those luminous summits. Cheers.